Beauty Killed the Beast
by ElasticBobaTurtle
Summary: These three are all mysteries. They are candles burning in a dark room of eternal night, and I am here to witness them snuff out. Team 7 after the fall.


Happy 2006, folks. Team 7 stuff.

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"Sasuke!" 

What is the name she calls?

"_Sasuke!"_

Can it be mine?

…Or perhaps, it is my ghost's. I am too far gone to remember. Her voice is the timbre of a forgotten mother who cries her throat hoarse as her child walks blindly away. It is the time of running barefoot through bloody wheat fields where no one else is there to hear a little boy scream in echoing spirals to the sky.

Up my spine, her shriek runs. I delight in its treacherous climb, in the long nails it digs into the flesh of my back so fiercely. I hope it will leave scars. My ghost revels in the scars; because in the scars lies a remembrance to feed off of—the blessed memory of blood and scabs, and most importantly, pain. Sometimes in my free time (which is usually at night) I ponder the past of my ghost—why does it look so sad? Why are the eyes of my ghost red?

Somehow I'm sure it isn't from crying. My ghost isn't the type to cry. It will not tell me the reason, though; it will not utter the cause. It won't tell me its name, either. I think my ghost hates me.

I'm not sure why; I haven't treated it unkindly. But whenever I catch the sallow glance of the whisper's moment, there is always an accusation behind the long lashes. It doesn't bother me much, though; my ghost has been here since as long as I can remember, and it hasn't hurt me yet. I know I'm safe.

This girl is strange. She won't leave me alone. I don't know her, and still she calls this _name_ to me over and over and over again, as if by doing so, it'll change—something.

Every time the girl cries out, my ghost shivers inside of me, deep down in my gut. I feel its marrow thrumming; it feels almost _afraid_. This has never happened before. _Never, _in all the years—decades—centuries that I have been.

Who is the girl? And what of the blonde boy beside her, and the silver-haired man who slouches so tiredly? What of the mask that the man wears, slung across his (surely) frowning mouth, over his eye? Does he find a virtue in being blind? If so, why not cover both eyes?

These people are so strange, so alien. Their scent is foreign, their look awkwardly entrancing. But then, I've learned that this place I'm in (for now) is bizarre. There's nowhere else like it. I've heard others call it beautiful, but I'm not sure what they mean by _"beautiful"…_

"Sasuke!"

Now the blonde boy is starting to call the name, too, along with the girl. And my ghost is trembling, so terribly, so strongly. I can't understand it. I almost feel bad for it.

I wonder why the man hasn't started calling the name, too. He seems so _old_, but I know for a fact that he's younger than me.

My ghost is trembling so much it's gotten to my hands. I look to my trembling fingertips, slender and only faintly bloodied.

The boy is starting to get angry, I think. The girl is beginning to cry. The man is…the man does nothing but remember. He is ill; I see the fumed green sickness in the lines engraved on his covered face; I smell the heady scent of exhaustion, of the man who has been to death and come back again. It is all a fond memory, but I have let it go.

The boy is changing. His whole demeanor—his soul is twisting, is stretching, is breaking into something new. I feel it bleeding to red and fangs, to animalistic delight and midnight runs where the only thing to believe in is the hunt and the _prey_. It throbs in the air and turns the breath cloudy with lust.

He is nearly beautiful, now.

He turns and snarls at me, and the saliva drips from his fangs to the ground. The girl watches this transformation in what I think is—is horror? I can't understand the girl, the things she feels or the looks she gives. There is no horror in being beautiful, is there? Terror and beauty are so far apart…but perhaps she doesn't understand this. She doesn't seem to be very smart, or brave, or strong.

The man watches, and does nothing.

These three are all mysteries. They are candles burning in a dark room (eternal night), and I am here to witness them snuff out.

_(The last tendrils of smoke drift to dawn.)_

"_Sasuke-teme!"_ the shriek-snarl from the snout, and the boy comes charging, charging, wind flying past in blue crackling arcs, and the girl with the tears spilling out of her eyes falls weakly to the ground. I feel the rush and the wonderful anger, the _power_ that the boy feels, like bubbling vinegar, and for a moment I think I could love him for it. For being so much like _me_, in this tiny instant. For making the—loneliness—just…for this moment…be forgotten. (_but only for a moment)_

I smile and the ghost closes its eyes inside and hates me.

The boy is fast and the boy is ferocious, but I am calm and leaning lethal. He comes to me with shredding claws and I bat them away with cool fingertips; there are no scratches to be found. He may be beautiful in his blood, but I am still more, and both of us know it; the man and I. It's a strange connection that I feel with the man who watches with his half-blindness, his half-clutching-to-life. His is a pitiable existence, but somehow I don't feel the pity for him that I should.

But if the man is pitiable, then what is the girl? She is so weak and pale green, such uselessness wrapped in delicate rice paper; her white skin and trembling lips do nothing to capture beauty, only reflect it. But her weakness is alluring—it invites me to step on it, crush the fragile wings. (_a butterfly caught in a jar; the wing-dust powders the bottom)_

The boy runs and rips, growls and barks, a true rumbling surging through the ground, up my feet. I close my eyes and inhale the lust of his air. It perfumes my lungs, soaks with floating red fragrance.

When I open my eyes he is there before me and the _look _he gives me is a look I will forever remember. It will be tucked safe in between the layers of night brain tissue, and I will treasure it. He is almost crying; I can smell the salt snuck in between the yellowed fangs.

It is a strange mix of magnificent predator and—and—

Human.

And that is when I know what I must do, and I do it.

I must kill the beauty, and the beast.

_(The death of a tragic couple impaled on a single rose thorn.)_

Here I bring my hand up to meet him, his vinegar anger and sadness. There the feeling of the soft gut envelopes my fist, and then it is all bursting blood, a strange soft squishiness of organs and dreams the color of summer oranges.

He falls back, and there the beauty dies, drains out to nothing in two moments, to ashen gray cheeks and dirty blue skies. Maybe it was all an illusion. I can't understand how something so ugly could blossom into something so great, so different. This is why I live: to one day understand.

I watch the boy die and for once I feel almost sad. But I have abandoned the tragedy, so I do not dwell on it. The girl will do the mourning for me, for the man, for herself. Perhaps that is her purpose: to forever mourn for those who cannot.

_Hers is not a pitiable existence, but a necessary one, after all…_

The man can do nothing. The girl begs him to do something. Even the man knows he should be doing something, but he does nothing. The death has eaten his arms, his memories, and his pride.

My ghost is crying.

I think this is what they meant when they told me, "_beautiful_."

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There you have it. My first post of the year. Don't worry, there'll be many more to come. Spam 33 


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